"Secret Agent" turned homemaker… still blundering about…

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100 Foods: Cranberries

This book takes an interesting, in-depth look at 100 amazing foods and discusses their healthy properties. That said, Parragon does not bother to go into any sort of detail as to which seasons the foods are from or where they are from, which is great… as the publisher is in the UK and I am not.

Also the recipes in this book are not necessarily for the busy on-the-go people or they don’t really make the healthy food the stand out in the completed dish.

My plan… I’m going to tackle these 100 health foods relative to their seasonality in my area (some are never seasonable here… but I will follow their seasons in the location in which they are grown) and find simple easy recipes that showcase the foods. Which could be great for amazing foods like plums… but not so great for anchovies…

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Cranberries

For some reason I associate these with winter… so now is an appropriate time to discuss them.

The majority of all cranberries are turned into juice, sauce and sweetened dried cranberries. Cranberry juice is usually the one juice that contains the most sugar of all of the juices… as cranberries are both very sour and bitter.

Cranberries are filled with Vitamin C and Manganese. Thy are very good for the immune system, act as anti-cancer agents and assist in healing/preventing urinary tract infections. The problem is most people are not eating cranberries raw or have added enough sugar to combat the taste that they no longer have their immune boosting punch.

Around here… we buy our cranberries in the winter and dehydrate them (unsweetened) for use throughout the year either plain or in baked goods. On holidays though… we still buy the canned cranberry gel because that is what we grew up with and it is still our favorite. I do buy cranberry juice, but I always buy the diet variety to cut out on some unnecessary sugar.